wrong postage on emails

[hatsford]

copied from Chat as requested

For the last month or so sold emails for auctions to domestic UK customers are coming through with the international postage charge shown instead of the domestic one.

So if the item ends at say £5 with free UK postage, to a UK buyer.  The email comes through as £5+£10 postage (my international rate).

Now the problem is the buyers email saying they've won the auction is presumably also the same, as I've received a number of irate messages from buyers who are receiving these emails and think I'm adding a rip off postage charge on that wasn't displayed before.

Once the buyer goes to pay, the postage corrects itself to free, so its just an error on the emails being sent out.

Its frustrating as its annoying customers and its resulting in an increase in the number of unpaid items. 

This is happening on 100% of the items, so for an example just look at any item Ive sold in the last month

[hatsford]

copied from Chat as requested

In the seller hub, in items awaiting payment the 'total' column is blank. The subtotal is there and correct, but the total is blank. 

[anita@ebay]

Hi @hatsford, thanks for post.

It sounds like there are 2 different issues happening.

1) Seller Hub > Awaiting payment >  'Total'  is blank.

2) Sold emails for auctions to domestic UK customers are incorrectly coming through with the international postage charge shown instead of the domestic (free shipping).

I have created 2 separate tech reports for a tech team to review and will update you as soon as I hear back from them.

For the future we kindly ask you to create separate thread for each issue so we can track/update it separately.

Thank you,

Anita

[anita@ebay]

Hi @hatsford, 

The tech team came back to me regarding the 'Sold email' issue. They were not able to replicate the reported issue as they couldn't find the message added in the screenshot. Did you receive the email to My eBay messages or your email address? 

Thanks,

Anita

[hatsford]

Message to my email - and presumably to my buyers email as well.  As it happens on 100% of domestic sales, it shouldn't be too hard to find. 

[hatsford]

Seems I can't respond to your messages any more.  So not ignoring you just unable to reply

[anita@ebay]

@hatsford, thanks.

Those are auto-generated messages, and the tech team wouldn't be able to view your private emails (only messages that are in My eBay).

No worries, I've sent them the information you shared so far. If you can share that screenshot whenever you are able to send the message, that would be great, and I will add it to my report.

Thank you,

Anita

[wellingnorth]

Just a quick note to say that I'm seeing this issue as well - after an auction finishes the sale confirmation email always shows

'Price: £x + £y postage'

with the postage amount as the most expensive international postage option, I think possibly just the 'worldwide' option.

I appreciate the final postage amount may vary depending on where the buyer wants to have the item delivered but can't see the logic for showing the worldwide price for UK buyers. Perhaps what might be most useful here is to instead display which country the buyer is registered in or usually ships to. This would be useful as the international postage options available to us don't match up with all the current Royal Mail rates (eg Europe zones 1-3) so would allow the seller to send a corrected invoice.

I'm not sure if the same issue is happening on buyer emails - an auction I won last week had the following text in the message: "Your winning bid: £x + postage" (ie no specific amount shown)

[anita@ebay]

Hi @hatsford, I have an update regarding the first issue (Total is blank).

The team came back advising that this is not a technical issue. This change was made to make the experience consistent with 'View order details' page, which already did not show the order total for 'Awaiting payment' orders. This is because, since the order isn't paid yet, the order total details may potentially change due to the seller sending a new invoice.

The other issue has been escalated, however there are no further updates yet.

I'll keep you posted as soon as I hear more.

Thank you,

Anita

[anita@ebay]

Hi @hatsford and @wellingnorth, hope you are well.

I received an update regarding the incorrect postage cost displayed in the emails.

The improvement to display the correct (domestic) shipping cost for UK buyers is currently in the process and the fix is due to go live along with the site updates in the next quarter.

Thank you,

Anita

[wellingnorth]

Thanks for this Anita, good to see little issues like this getting fixed!

[hatsford]

I'll believe it when I see it.  Shame its such a low priority as its impacting auction prices, increasing non payment instances, and generally annoying buyers .

Some of the more repeatable messages this week 

"Hi m8, I won this item for £16.85 but ebay is charging me £26.85 could you kindly sort this problem out for me then I will pay, regards"

"Hi, I think there has been a 'glitch' in the system as it is indicating that I should pay £16.50 when my winning bid is £6.50 with free postage."

As a result I'm now going through my next batch of my auciton listings , to see which ones I can move to a different sales venue.

[wellingnorth]

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anita@ebay wrote:

The improvement to display the correct (domestic) shipping cost for UK buyers is currently in the process and the fix is due to go live along with the site updates in the next quarter.

---

Hi anita@ebay just a quick note to say that this is still working in the same way - ie on a UK auction sale to a UK registered buyer, the sale confirmation email still shows the item price + the international postage cost (I think possibly the highest cost that you have listed).

What would actually be helpful with these sale confirmation emails would be to flag up if the winning bidder is registered overseas or regularly has items shipped overseas so the seller can send an updated invoice if necessary.

[mg9903]

I keep getting this issue, and it's frustrating when buyers see the wrong postage option on their emails and ask to cancel! I can see the total item price on the cancellation request also includes this false higher price. Is there any update on this issue being fixed?

[wellingnorth]

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@mg9903 wrote:

I keep getting this issue, and it's frustrating when buyers see the wrong postage option on their emails and ask to cancel! I can see the total item price on the cancellation request also includes this false higher price. Is there any update on this issue being fixed?

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I think this is a different issue which has also happened to me a couple of times recently, just to double check you are saying that UK buyers have been sent emails from ebay specifying international postage?

[mg9903]

Yes, that's right. It's fine when they go to checkout, but when if I accept their offer, they get an email which specifies the international postage price instead.

[wellingnorth]

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@mg9903 wrote:

Yes, that's right. It's fine when they go to checkout, but when if I accept their offer, they get an email which specifies the international postage price instead.

---

Sounds like a similar issue, in my case they buyer said they were also presented with the international postage when they went to pay, but who knows.

marco@ebay  this sounds like it could be the same thing that I reported on this thread:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Ebay-sending-out-invoices-with-incorrect-postage-9-...

[hatsford]

Its never been fixed, despite what ebay's Wednesday chat pr team say. Its been going on for best part of 12 months now. 

[wellingnorth]

Were you able to get screenshots of this from any of your buyers?

For me it's always done it on my sale confirmation email as a seller but I've only recently had reports from buyers that this has happened (and cancelled the sale as a result). Unfortunately they weren't able to send me screenshots of the messages.